Elle Macpherson says she was 'an insecure dork’ as 'The Body’. Now, at 50, she
reckons she looks better than ever – but don’t ask her about skinny models

As I turn the corner of a Selfridges back room I almost bump into the 6ft-tall frame of a supermodel. In fact, Elle Macpherson is wearing high heels, so she’s even taller. Her hair, too, is long and cascades down her almost elfin face in blonde strands. She’s all in black and her leather skirt billows below her, hiding the famous legs. She is an impressive sight, but the most extraordinary thing about it, surely, is that she turned 50 in March.

One of the original supermodels to emerge from the Eighties, by the close of the decade Macpherson was recognised internationally as “The Body”. Not content simply to be known for her looks, she turned the most famous body on the planet into a brand. Her lingerie range, Elle Macpherson Intimates, has sold around the globe. She has also hosted – and been executive producer for – reality fashion shows on both sides of the Atlantic. Still, it can’t have been easy for one of the world’s most desired women to reach her fifties.

“I don’t think beauty’s reserved for youth,” she tells me, sitting elegantly on a matching black sofa. “I think women today want to look good, they don’t want to look young. They want to feel good, they don’t want to behave like a teenager necessarily. My ambition has been to navigate this phase of my life with grace and I feel like I’m doing that. I see my priorities changing. I realise that this is a period where you can either go with it or it can be quite difficult.”

She speaks earnestly, sometimes as if she is talking about someone else. Can you imagine, she asks, what it would be like for someone who has spent their life in the public eye, to realise suddenly that they don’t look the same as when they were 20? “If that’s your mindset, it could be really uncomfortable.”

But Macpherson is, she says, at ease. “I feel better now than I’ve ever felt. I look at pictures of myself when I was younger and I think, 'God, I was so gorgeous there, but I didn’t feel it.’ Or, 'Wow, I look so much better now.’ I was such a dork and I can see insecurity written all over my face, trying to be something I wasn’t – even though at the time I thought I was cool.”

Born in Sydney, Macpherson had what she describes as an easy, simple childhood. She swam every morning at 5.30am, played netball and lists debating as one of her “greatest” school achievements. She was house captain, had lots of friends and loved school. “I was a leader,” she confirms.

Her parents, though, separated when she was 10 and she moved between her father and mother. He was a sound engineer who started a shop in his garage and expanded into a chain of stores; she was a nurse, among other things, and was remarried to a lawyer.

Macpherson can trace herself through her “three” parents. “My stepfather taught me commitment, discipline, respect for the world and for difference of opinion. He taught me the importance of education. The things I learnt through school have supported me all my life: methodical preparation; making lists. If I put the work in, usually the by-product is a great result.”

Her mother taught her flexibility. “She went to where her heart was. Do what you love, love what you do. And then my dad was really savvy and entrepreneurial, he thought outside the box. He was a bit of a rebel and a hard worker.”

After winning a place to study law at a Sydney university – which one she can’t remember – Macpherson deferred and went to model in America. And that was that. “I just never came home,” she says, and laughs. She launched a career in fashion and was married to her first husband, a photographer, at 21. She adorned the much-coveted cover of Sports Illustrated a record five times – hence “The Body” – and, in 1986, Time magazine put her on its cover.

But Macpherson wanted more. Rather than allowing magazines to make money out of her image, she began to make calendars herself. “I thought, 'Why am I doing a calendar for Sports Illustrated? Everybody seems to like the pictures, why don’t I just make my own?’” And so she did. In 1989, when a small New Zealand company approached her, to help it break into the Australian market, she cut herself in on the deal and created what would become Elle Macpherson Intimates. “I made about £20,000 for the year. And then we just grew and grew.”

Elle Macpherson at 50 is a very different woman to the supermodel in her twenties. There was the party lifestyle for a start. “I have done it all. I’m a girl from the Eighties – what do you think?! I went to Studio 54 and I met Michael Jackson, Andy Warhol and Diana Ross, and I hung out in that scene. It was very hedonistic and there was the rise of the supermodel and the rise of Wall Street and it was very potent and intoxifying and fast-paced and exciting. I was a part of that movement and really indulged and enjoyed. And I was there 100 per cent.” Drugs and booze? She laughs. “Not for the last 11 years.”

Today, Macpherson seems a devoted mother. She mentions her elder son’s upcoming GCSEs three times, and clears her diary for cricket on Monday and Wednesday afternoons. She is rigorously organised, although she doesn’t make as many lists as she did. “I’m streamlining my life. Before it was like I was in list fog. Couldn’t see the wood through the lists. But there’s a lot to be said for making lists and the satisfaction of ticking them off.”

Each area of her life is carefully choreographed. “I like to get my nails done because grooming is important to me, and I use my hands a lot. I get them done maybe twice a month and I schedule my nail appointment the same way I schedule a conference call. It has the same importance.”

Would she call herself a perfection-ist? “No. What is perfection? I’m diligent, but some of the most exciting things in my life have come from spontaneous mishaps… the beauty’s in the chaos.”

Is she difficult to work with? “Depends on the day,” she says, and laughs. “I’m Australian so I’m super direct and sometimes that doesn’t go down so well. I need to massage my tact a bit more and exercise a little bit more humour…”

How, then, would she describe her sense of humour? “Blossoming?”

Surprises make her laugh. “When something takes us out of ourselves and there’s that spontaneous letting-go that is so delightful.”

Macpherson used to host a lot of dinner parties – “both with partners and alone” – but now she rarely socialises during the week. “The kids don’t go to bed until 9pm or 10pm, and I don’t like to go out before they are in bed. And that’s OK.”

She separated from Arpad Busson, the multi-millionaire father of her two sons, in 2005, and last year married the billionaire Jeffrey Soffer. He lives in Florida and Macpherson hopes to move there from London. “How cool that I got married when I was 49,” she reflects. “I have three beautiful stepchildren and two children, and I married the man I love.”

Macpherson is today in Selfridges to promote an “alkalising” food supplement. She helped develop it with a Harley Street nutritionist whom she met in her late forties, when she wasn’t feeling her best. “I was getting jet-lagged, my skin was really dry, I was not feeling motivated and I couldn’t sleep at night. I started putting weight on around my waist, which was unusual for me.”

Her supplement is, she says with no hint of irony, a “sort of a gift to other people”. She now feels nourished on a “cellular level”, but concedes that “healthy diet, exercise, love, lots of water, having a laugh,” are also important.

I ask her how she keeps so fit. “Don’t obsess. Keep it simple. Have fun. Do sport.” In England, she says, we are a little more limited. “We don’t have mountains to climb, we can’t go skiing, I don’t do road biking here.” Rather, she walks, runs and works-out at the gym. Whatever happens, she does 45 minutes of “something” a day. It could be acupuncture, stretch, yoga or weights. “Or going for a walk in the park.”

The fashion industry has been kind to Macpherson, so I’m not surprised when she sings its praises. “It has supported me for 30 years and I’m in a business made by women for women. I find that incredibly supportive, inspiring and profound to some extent, because there are so many people who are employed in the fashion and beauty world and I feel that people are able to use fashion as a way of expressing themselves.”

But when I ask about skinny models, she surprises me. “I think you’ve got better questions than that one.” Really? “Yeah.” Why? “I think that’s just one of those passé criticisms that don’t have a lot of merit or meaning. Jockeys are very small. And? Football players are really big. And? You have specialised body types for particular jobs.”

I cannot resist asking whether this unusual 50-year-old has had any work done. During the interview I’ve found myself searching for signs of ageing. “On my house?” she replies and laughs. “It’s not really my thing. Quite clearly. Look at this face, it’s very natural.”

Is she happy? “Yes. Fulfilled. Inspired. Motivated.”

Before we part, I ask for her biggest quality and fault. There’s a long pause. “I can’t think of a witty answer and it needs one.” She laughs again. “I don’t want to be too earnest.”